A group of soldiers were training for their first parachute jump. Their instructions were: Jump when you are told to jump. Count to ten, then pull the ripcord. If the first chute doesn’t open, pull the second ripcord. When you land, a truck will take you back to the post.

When the plane got over the landing zone, a young soldier jumped when it was his turn. He counted to ten, then pulled the ripcord. Nothing happened. He pulled the second ripcord. Nothing happened.

“Oh great,” he complained to himself. “I’ll bet the truck won’t be waiting for us, either.”

Sometimes we do everything we are supposed to do, yet things still don’t work out the way we expected. Life is filled with disappointments, but we can always trust that our hope in Jesus will never let us down.

“And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us. You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”—Romans 5:5-8